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We stepped out onto Santa Catalina.  I felt an intense fatigue -- it'd been sixteen hours since I'd last eaten, and diarrhea takes its toll even on those who are well-nourished.  We didn't want the day to be a throwaway, though, so our first stop was el Monasterio de Santa Catalina, reputably Arequipa's most famous landmark.  Over 400 years old, the monastery had survived the city's many earthquakes, and stood as a living reminder of an era gone by.

We paid the entrance fee and walked in.  There were no tour guides; a tiny map on the back of our ticket provided our only bearings.  We didn't need guidance, however, to appreciate the understated beauty of this place:

Of course, it being a monastery, you're going to get religious imagery:

Weaving between the mazelike paths and elegant courtyards, however, was itself the highlight -- even if my illness-induced fatigue forced me to take frequent breaks.  It felt a little strange sitting down on 400-year-old stone, but slowly but surely, my tired legs carried me through the vast complex.

There was even a 400-year-old laundry contraption

along with a fountain,

migrating birds,

a random room full of guinea pigs (of course, now I felt really bad about my meal the previous day),

rooftop views,

and more architectural highlights.

After we were done with the monastery, we went down a block and tried to visit the Casa del Moral.  Unfortunately, due to the August 15th holiday, it was closed -- so we continued down toward the plaza.  Then we were mobbed.

There was a parade happening on Santa Catalina, just as there'd been the previous day.  The difference now was that gargantuan crowds were now everywhere -- all over the sidewalks, even hanging onto lights and signposts -- fighting to get a vantage point of the passing floats.  Blocked off by the human barricade, we tried to find another street to the plaza; we ended up on San Agustin.  At the corner entrance to the plaza, a ridiculous crush of people was trying to push and shove its way in, virtually trampling crying kids in the process.  Tammy and I got caught up in this mess, as people shoved us from behind and locals from all sides started grabbing and pushing from all directions.  I held tightly onto my bag (the same one I'd gotten in Cusco -- except, after just two days of use, its shoulder strap was almost cleanly torn off) and tried to inch my way toward the entrance.  People yelled, screamed, and smelled very, very bad.  It was utter chaos.  After several minutes of being shoved by and sandwiched against foul-smelling Peruvians, I looked down at my bag and saw that its side pocket had been unzipped.  Fortunately, the only thing in that pocket was a bottle of hand sanitizer, which was still there.  I turned back and saw that Tammy had been lost in the mob.  Trapped in the crowd, I was shoved forward.  After one particularly vicious shove, enough was enough: tempers flared and I began shoving back.  People up against the wall looked at me with disapproval, apparently oblivious to the dozens of arms that were shoving me first.  Somehow, after a seeming eternity of this, I made it through -- beaten and battered -- to the plaza.  People were everywhere -- even up on the cathedral fence:

I looked back at the parade and saw it was virtually identical to the one we'd seen the previous day.  Sure, the 15th was the actual anniversary, but I couldn't fathom why people would run each other over to watch what was honestly a pretty repetitive and unexciting procession:

I stood under the archway to the left and waited for Tammy to make her way through the crowd.  I waited, waited, and waited -- enduring more stares (some of these people just couldn't get over seeing an Asian person) and dozens of entreaties from restaurant publicists who apparently were not perceptive enough to see that I was obviously looking for a person, not for food. 

Half an hour later, Tammy emerged from the mob.  We walked down the way to a little shop where we could gather ourselves and I could burn more photos to CD.  Inside, she looked in her purse and found out her camera was missing.  In the chaos, someone had reached inside her bag and stolen a camera that had been one picture away from a full roll.  

Once the photos were burned, I headed back out to the plaza with an infuriated Tammy.  We stopped in one store for one last bit of Arequipan shopping, and then -- at almost 7 PM -- we thought it was about time to eat our first (and only) meal of the day. 

We stepped inside our fourth and final Arequipan balcony restaurant: El Mistico.  We again had the nice view
 
but with my body still in disarray, I was stuck drinking chicken soup and tea for the second consecutive night. 

Our flight for Lima wasn't until 4:30 AM, so we had a lot of time to kill.  We sat on the balcony and took in the parade

which admittedly, after two days, had grown extremely repetitive.  Granted, my getting sick and Tammy getting robbed probably contributed to our attitude toward the parade, but it's hard to keep yourself hyped up about something when you see the same floats and hear the same music for the umpteenth time. 

The locals, however, were very much still in fiesta mode, even several hours later:
 

After some time, I started feeling like I was getting better, so I decided to be adventurous and get the creps sucet; unfortunately, the orangey goodness wasn't all that spectacular, and worse, I definitely wasn't better -- my stomach did not appreciate the sugar influx one bit. 

One thing we could appreciate, however, was the end of the parade, which came around an hour short of midnight.  Cleanup crews quickly hit the streets encircling the plaza, and a massive group of police officers gathered together off to the side and stood there doing absolutely nothing.  I'm not sure how police can handle crowd control when they themselves are huddled together into a useless mass:

After a little more time at El Mistico, we gave a generous tip to our waitress -- who'd been very friendly and diligent throughout our nearly five-hour meal -- and headed back to Hotel Wilson.  There, we gathered our bags and hailed a taxi to take us over to the airport.  The cabby was a nice guy, though his cab reeked heavily of gas; in between coughs, we worried the car might combust at any moment.

Fortunately, we avoided combustion and safely arrived at Arequipa airport late Tuesday night / early Wednesday morning.  Not long after I took my seat in the near-empty building, a couple airport security officers walked my direction.  One of them called out to me:

"Wang Chung?"

"¿Cómo?" I asked, not understanding him.

"Wang Chung," he said again.

"Lo siento," I replied, "no comprendo."

"Cómo se llama?

"Eric.  Enrique."

"Wang Chung?"

At this, I looked away from the guy, who then walked off with his buddy.  Needless to say, I hadn't expected to hear random racist remarks from airport security.  I was annoyed, but I don't know what I could have done -- it seemed like a very bad idea to retaliate against an armed officer in a developing country.

I pushed two chairs together and tried my best to get some sleep, but I got at most a few minutes.  Back in disarray due to dinner, I made several trips to the bathroom over the course of the night.  After a long four hours, it was time for our flight to Lima.

Map of Peru